Discourses upon the Existence and Attributes of God

2. The quickness of its motion. [^* Nothing is more quick in the whole course o• nature; the Sun runs through the World in a day, this can do it in a moment. It can with one flight of fancy ascend to the battlements of Heaven.] The mists of the Air that hinder the sight of the Eye, cannot hinder the flights of the Soul; it can pass in a moment from one end of the World to the other, and think of things, a thousand miles distant. It can think of some mean thing in the world, and presently by one cast in the twinkling of an Eye, mount up as high as Heaven. As its desires are not bounded by sensual objects, so neither are the motions of it restrained by them. It will break forth with the greatest vigour, and conceive things infinitely above it; Though it be in the body, it acts as if it were ashamed to be Cloistered in it. This could not be the result of any material cause: Whoever knew mere matter understand, think, will? And what it hath not, it cannot give. That which is destitute of Reason and Will, could never confer Reason and Will.^* Tis not the effect of the Body, for the Body is fitted with members to be subject to it: Tis in part ruled by the activity of the Soul, and in part by the Counsel of the Soul; Tis used by the Soul and knows not how it is used. Nor could it be from the Parents, since the Souls of the Children often transcend those of the Parents in vivacity, acuteness and comprehensiveness: One man is stupid and begets a Son with a capacious understanding; one is debauched and beastly in morals, and begets a Son who from his Infancy testifies some virtuous inclinations, which sprout forth in delightful fruit with the ripeness of his age.³ Whence should this difference arise, a fool begat the wise man, and a debauched the virtuous man? The wisdom of the one could not descend from the foolish Soul of the other; nor the virtues of the Son, from the deformed and polluted Soul of the Parent; it lies not in the Organs of the Body; For if the folly of the Parent proceeded not from their Souls, but the ill disposition of the Organs of their bodies, how comes it to pass that the bodies of the Children are better Organized beyond the goodness of their immediate cause? We must recur to some invisible hand, that makes the difference, ⟨p. 33⟩